The Effects of Hot Spots Policing on Crime: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis

TLDR

Crime scholars and practitioners note that crime clusters in small places or “hot spots,” suggesting that focusing police efforts on these areas can more efficiently reduce crime. This article updates and expands a prior Campbell Collaboration systematic review on the effects of hot spots policing on crime. The authors performed meta‑analyses to assess the size, direction, and significance of hot spots policing’s impact on crime. The meta‑analysis shows that hot spots policing yields small but significant crime reductions that spread to adjacent areas, that problem‑oriented policing has larger effects than simple increases in traditional police actions, and that community members generally respond positively, though few studies examine police‑community relations.

Abstract

In recent years, crime scholars and practitioners have pointed to the potential benefits of focusing police crime prevention efforts on crime places. Research suggests that there is significant clustering of crime in small places or “hot spots.” A number of researchers have argued that crime problems can be reduced more efficiently if police officers focused their attention to these deviant places. In this article, we update and improve upon a previously completed Campbell Collaboration systematic review of the effects of hot spots policing and crime. Meta-analyses were used to determine the size, direction, and statistical significance of the overall impact of hot spots policing strategies on crime. The results of our research suggests that hot spots policing generates small but noteworthy crime reductions, and these crime control benefits diffuse into areas immediately surrounding targeted crime hot spots. Our analyses find that problem-oriented policing interventions generate larger mean effect sizes when compared to interventions that simply increase levels of traditional police actions in crime hot spots. We also find that only a small number of studies examine the impacts of hot spots policing on police-community relations. The extant research on this topic, however, suggests that community members have positive reactions to these focused policing actions.